Way too much to debunk - HELP!

[mac56]

A friend and I got caught on the "good guy" side of a barrage of RW spew. There's way too much to debunk - it was sort of a "dogpile" exercise by our neocon associates - but here's a small part of their comments. Debunking help would be appreciated.

"Are you ignoring the fact the Kyoto Treaty was really not in our best interests to begin with and that virtually no signatory of the treaty has yet to implement most, if not all, of the required programs? When Bush put off all the sanctions that the Kyoto brood would like to institute right now, it's because the immediate socio-economic fallout would be too great to bear for too many people. The only countries that can afford Kyoto protocols are the elites with money and power. Most need food preservation before protection from a little thing we call the ozone layer. What is the lesser of two evils: denying them any refrigeration for their food, or preventing a global warming scenario that isn't altogether 100% solid?

Also, the jury is still out on global warming so it's not as though that's an absolute given. I know, I know, you can produce various studies that show the trend in global temperature. Many of those same studies, however, have a difficult time tying global warming to human issues and not just cyclical climate changes that have occurred regularly."

[ET Awful]

1. You can start by pointing out that even the Bush

administration has now acknowledged global warming and humanities contribution to said warming.

[Badger1]

2. Remember

You can't win an argument with a fool. And these fools have been fooled.

[goddess40]

6. Rebuttal

This info is from the October issue of Discover magazine. "Bush's position (on global warming) conflicted with the findings of distinguished scientific bodies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 'a scientific panel founded at the behest of his own father.'" On the economic argument, "the Bush administration has done absolutely no analysis to substantiate its claim that the Kyoto Protocol or domestic policies to reduce carbon dioxide pollution from power plants would seriously harm the U.S. economy." So Bush just pulled the economic claim out of thin air.
Other countries will not follow Kyoto protocols unless we lead the way.

[friesianrider]

8. Sooo true...

Have you ever tried to argue with an idiot? Can't do it. Illogical people are impossible to argue with and since 99% of Republicans are illogical...

[TryingToWarnYou]

3. Never argue with idiots...

They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

[Richardo]

4. Don't know anything about the details of Kyoto...

...but their arguments reek of regurgitated pre-processed talking points.

This one is curious, however:

The only countries that can afford Kyoto protocols are the elites with money and power.

Yeah, like the United States, who contributes more CO2 than any other economy in the world. If we can afford it, why not do it?

That being said, I was always a little leery myself of what I understood of Kyoto because after 30+ years under the EPA, Clean Air and Water Acts, etc I think that the US is undergoing a good-faith effort to reduce pollution (this was before Bush started rolling back these regulations). My thought was that developing economies needed the most help in reducing pollutants.

[trotsky]

5. Bush White House says global warming is real & from humans:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1291813,00.html

In a dramatic reversal of its previous position, the White House this week conceded that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were the only likely explanation for global warming.

Citing the "best possible scientific information," an administration official, James Mahoney, delivered a report to Congress that essentially reversed the previous White House position set out by George Bush, who had refused to link carbon dioxide emissions to climate change.

[wadestock]

7. Just a quick sanity check

Global warming now is fact, not fiction.

Gore was really into this and assembled about 100 scientists that studied the problem for about 1 year....you can research this.

The exact results of this were so disturbing that they have not been released to the general public. The effort ran into the millions of dollars and consisted of state of the art models of what would happen in the next 50 years to 100 years or so.

The results showed that the North Pole would be gone somewhere in the 2030 to 2050 time frame.

The reason I know this much is I had contract efforts with one of the premier scientists that was on the team.

If you think any of this is hard to believe...just ask yourself how little the pubic is told about anything. It's a complete joke.

BTW....this does not represent the end of mankind on earth but distinct adaptations that may have to be made to accommodate an eventual desert around the entire equator, rising oceans which means a certain percentage will have to relocate...and possibly added benefits from improved weather in colder regions. The changes will occur slowly over time....but one should recognize that once the North Pole starts going....there is an exponential ramping effect that will occur in which those final chunks will come off in extremely large pieces and the final significant rise in water may take place in 10 years or less rather than say 2 or 3 times that time. So in other words, the changes are so slow right now that no one cares. Once it gets into the threshold of really being noticeable in terms of reduced "land mass" then it will be hard to believe that the general public won't get some sense of concern.

This has been discussed by a number of experts and consists of the ice shelves disintegrating quickly once grounded ice is unpinned. Remember the chunk that came off a year or so ago that was the size of Rhode Island?

The other wacky theory floating around by the RW is that there is no way that Antarctica will EVER melt?&*!! Yes it will take significantly longer....but the same principles apply there. I haven't kept up with predictions on Antarctica....but you can bet that when that melts we have a whole level of problems to deal with. In other words, we'll probably be capable of adapting OK to the North Pole disappearing....but not Antarctica.

[IrateCitizen]

9. Interesting aside re: "accelerated warming"

I was watching an episode of Scientific American with Alan Alda on PBS a short while back, and they were looking at the effects of climate change on Alaska. One of the interesting pieces was regarding the transformation of forest to bog in certain sections of the Alaskan wilderness. The next step in this process, should the warming continue, is the melting of large amounts of permafrost.

The big problem with this is that there are sizable CO2 deposits frozen within the permafrost. As soon as the permafrost melts, these carbon gases are released, thus further accelerating the problem of global warming.

When one thinks about a vast desert sweeping across the equatorial belt, it's difficult to comprehend the ramifications. We're talking about a wipeout of the earth's most diverse ecosystems. We're talking about removing the world's largest carbon sinks, therefore acclerating the warming process even FURTHER. We're talking about mass famine as farmland turns to desert. In short, we're talking about a catastrophe the likes of which the planet has never seen during the ascendancy of the great apes.

[wadestock]

12. Well stated....

Yes I tended to sound as if the adaptation to all of this....perhaps in the nearterm of 100 years or so...will be "tolerable"...at least to the extent that mankind will still survive.

But when people really do realize that they are living on a planet and not their own self interest driven universe....how do you think they will react?

Just look at how immature and illogical the reaction has been to 911. When people generally get stressed out in such situations, they tend not to think and go by gut instints that don't lend themselves to modern world solutions.

The system itself has everyone living essentially on the edge. It doesn't take much to throw things into a "tilt" situation. There's really no technological fix for this that will occur, so we're talking about a planet that's going to consist of a lot of disillusioned and distrustful people for a long long time just wondering how bad its going to get.

For millions of people that are already living with intense hardship, what we're talking about here will largely be "SOS".

At the "national level" almost any crazy scenario is possible. Won't this generally drive people away from our rather immature and random action profit driven model of government? US will be also seen as the major contributor to all of this.

In short....mankind is not mature enough or ready to face what's going to happen.

[kimchi]

10. Ask him WHY it isn't in our best interests to have clean air and water?

He made the statement, he has to prove it. We are one of the richest nations on earth-and the "socio-economic fallout" would be on the corporations who pollute in the first place. We can start being responsible for our actions now, or we can wait until it is too late. How much will that cost?

[Commendatori]

11. Exactly what was the Kyoto vote? Not even our side wanted it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Senate vote against it was 99-0?

A treaty with similar goals would be a great idea, but a bullshit treaty that China is exempted from as a "developing" nation, and that Russia said was "economically unfeasible" for them, is not a good idea. The idea of "If we can afford it, why not do it" is not only a bad one, but I don't even think we can afford it.

Even if we could, handuffing ourselves economically like that when so many are without jobs and health care is a bad, bad, bad idea. Kyoto hasn't gone into worldwide force because it freaking sucks.

Just because a goal is good doesn't mean a treaty is. I hate to agree with Republicans, especially since they don't give a fuck about the environment at ALL, but their assessment of this particular treaty was right on the mark.